Nixon tramps "Into The Wild" at Woodward Tahoe

On Friday, June 14th, the first annual Nixon Into The Wild Shop Challenge went down at Boreal/Woodward Tahoe.

Northern California shops Eternal, Northstar, Squaw, Boards N Motion, Ground Zero, Goodtimes, Milo, SFO/FTC all put together five man/woman teams to represent their shop talent to the fullest. Each team was comprised of three members of the shop crew & two members of the shop team, needless to say the battle field was tough. Most shops came in with their game face on—others came in ready to get ----faced.

When Boreal turned on the lifts at 9:00 AM, the park was groomed, the sun was shinning, and the shop challengers were ready to get crazy. Each team had 2 riders compete in the snowboard portion.

Next, the event moved into the Woodward skate bunker to watch an amazing skate jam session. There were some serious heavy hitters including stand-out showings from Goodtimes and Blood Wizard shops. Each shop had very strong skate teams in the two shop, 10 minute jam session heats.

At the end of the day the real grizzly contests began. We set up a BB gun range, hatchet toss, and bow & arrow challenges in the trees of the lower mountain. Everyone gathered around and cheered while the teams tried to show their best mountain man skills. Gus from Goodtimes was the only one to stick all 3 hatchets (which proved to be a difficult task for a lot of shops to even stick 1 hatchet) and Steve from Eternal was the only one the make all 4 arrows. This portion of the event may have given the shop owners a newly deserved respect in the eyes of their staff as the former tore through each discipline.

The inaugural Into The Wild closed with awards & well-earned refreshments on the deck of Boreal. The awards—custom built by Rob Salas at Old 40 Forge—were very impressive. The wood was 60 years old from Donner Lake area and the metal 150 years old from the Trans-Continental railroad. Salas spent the last 2 weeks collecting the materials and then forged the awards (i.e. he did not buy those axes...he built them). Nixon also awarded custom bottles of Tahoe Moonshine to the winning teams. How much grizzlier does it get than whiskey & hand-made axes?